Asimov’s Future History Volume 12

by Isaac Asimov

  The door opened smoothly enough that one could have been forgiven for thinking the person who entered had a right to be there. No forcing of the lock, no furtive gimmicking of the security electronics. Jadelo Gildern was not that clumsy a person. He slipped the device he had used on the door into his pocket and stepped into Davlo Lentrall’s work office. He slid the door shut behind him and let out a small sigh. Gildern looked calm enough as he stood there and looked about the smallish room, but in truth the man was scared to death, his heart pounding so loudly in his chest that he felt sure it could be heard down the hallway.

  Gildern knew he was not a brave man. The risks he took and the dangers he faced in his security work were all, always and ultimately, for his own benefit, his own personal gain. Even if the routes he took to gain that benefit were sometimes labyrinthine, the final destination was always there, in sight. Whatever he did, he did for himself.

  And he would be very surprised indeed if this expedition to Lentrall’s office did not do him a great deal of good – all the more good for his having first told Beddle it was extremely risky.

  In reality, there was very little risk at all. If Gildern had indeed gone after the computer data files, the odds of discovery and of capture would indeed have been fairly high. But the very fact that the data system security was so good played into Gildern’s hands. Good security made people feel safe. People who felt safe relaxed. And people who were relaxed made mistakes.

  One such mistake was in assuming that good security in one area meant security in all the others was equally good. This assumption was often mistaken – as in the matter of the door lock Gildern had just gotten past. The computer security was good, so the physical security had to be good, so it was perfectly safe to leave books and papers and notes lying around, so long as the door was locked. Gildern had hoped that Lentrall’s train of thought had worked that way, and it seemed as if it had. The on-line computer files would likely have been of very little use in any event. Gildern was no technician, no scientist. It would likely take so long to analyze a technical report that the moment would be lost. No. What he was after were papers he could photograph. He wanted scribbled notes, summaries prepared to explain things to outsiders. And if he got lucky, datapads chock full of information Gildern could download and take with him.

  The office was neat, but not so neat that it was a robot who had done the tidying. Gildern needed to look no further than the books on the shelf, slightly out of true with each other, than the papers that stacked up without being precisely squared up, than the way the chair sat in the middle of the floor instead of being shoved in neatly under the desk, for it to be instantly obvious to Gildern that Lentrall kept this room up himself. All to the good. If Gildern accidentally left something not precisely as he found it, it would more likely go unnoticed. And besides, if the man himself kept order here, the system of order itself might well tell Gildern something about the man.

  He set to work searching Davlo Lentrall’s office.

  Fredda Leving watched her husband enter the room, and saw how his expression changed the moment the door was sealed behind him. The look of calm imperturbability vanished, and a deeply troubled expression took its place. He looked to her, and seemed to understand what she had seen. He smiled, a bit sadly, a bit worriedly. “I didn’t used to be able to do that, back when I was just a policeman,” he said. “It used to be that I could let my face express whatever it wanted. Politics does strange things to a man.”

  Fredda got off her chair and took her husband by the hand. “I don’t know whether I should be happy to see you drop the act in front of me, or upset to see that you put on an act at all,” she said.

  “Probably both,” he said, a tone of apology in his voice.

  “What was it Devray wanted to tell you?”

  “That our friends and our enemies – who mayor may not be the same people – probably already know most of what we’ve been trying to keep secret from them.”

  “And from me.” Fredda moved a step or two away from her husband, folded her arms, and perched herself on the corner of his desk. “Maybe if they already know, you could finally break down and tell me what it’s all about.”

  Kresh started to pace, up and down the length of the office, his hands clasped behind his back – a rare but certain sign of anxiety and impatience. “Where is the fellow?” he asked of the open air, and then glanced toward his wife without breaking stride. “It’s not that I wanted to keep it secret from you. I just wanted you to hear it the same way I did. I wanted your opinion of – of it, without hearing about my biases or opinions, one way or the other.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly managed to keep from telling me much. All I know for sure is that it could mean trouble for the New Law robots.”

  Kresh stopped in his pacing and looked up at his wife again. “It could mean trouble for everyone,” he said. “Ah, here’s the man of the hour now.”

  The door slid open, and a young, energetic-looking young man came in, accompanied by a very ordinary-looking dun-colored robot of medium height and build. The robot immediately took up a position in one of the wall niches. But if the robot was entirely nondescript, the man was anything but. With his angular face, dark complexion, bristle-cut hair, and intense eyes, he was striking, rather than conventionally handsome. Whether or not Davlo Lentrall truly was a man at the center of important affairs, he at least looked as if he was.

  “Good morning to you, Dr. Leving,” Lentrall said, bowing slightly to her, an old-fashioned, courtly sort of gesture. He turned to her husband. “And good morning to you as well, sir.”

  “Good morning,” said Kresh. There was a couch against one wall in the office. The governor sat down on it, and Fredda sat down next to him. Kresh gestured to a comfortable chair facing the couch. “Please, Dr. Lentrall, have a seat.”

  But Lentrall did not sit down. Instead he stood there, plainly struggling to act calmer than he truly was. “Sir, I must tell you something, even if it sounds a bit absurd. I – I believe that I am being followed.”

  Kresh smiled sadly. “I’m sorry to say that doesn’t sound the least bit absurd,” said Kresh. “The police commander himself was just here, telling me just how interested certain parties were in you. I’d be surprised if someone hadn’t put a tail on you.”

  Davlo nodded and seemed to relax, just a trifle. “In a strange way, that’s a relief. I think I’d rather have someone actually following me than to be suffering paranoid delusions.”

  “Trust me, son. In this life, one does not exclude the other. But be that as it may, sit down, take a deep breath, and then – then we can talk about the matter in question.”

  “Yes, sir.” Davlo sat down rather gingerly, as if he half expected the chair to snap under his weight, or that some sort of trap was going to spring out of the armrests and grab him.

  Fredda noted that the room was not laid out as it normally was, and that her husband was not in his usual place. Her husband had obviously ordered the room rearranged so as to lower the emotional stakes as much as possible. For this morning, Alvar Kresh was not in the thronelike chair, not behind the imposing barrier of his ornate desk. He was sitting in a posture of slightly exaggerated relaxation on the couch. The chair Lentrall was in actually put him a little above Alvar’s eye level. The low table between the couch and Lentrall’s chair served as a sort of barrier, a neutral buffer zone that kept anyone from invading Lentrall’s personal space. Even Alvar’s calm expression and faint half-smile were part of the show.

  And Fredda suddenly realized that she was part of the show as well. Alvar wanted her to do the talking, have Lentrall address her. Did he think Lentrall would react more calmly talking to someone closer to his own age, a woman without official rank? Or was it that Alvar wanted to put himself in the position of observer, get himself outside the conversation, so that he could watch and judge impartially, without getting involved? Or maybe he didn’t have a reason at all. Maybe it was just political instinct at work, u
nanalyzed gut feeling.

  “Donald,” Kresh said, “bring our guest some refreshment.”

  “Certainly, sir.” Donald stepped forward and addressed Lentrall. “What would you care for?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” Lentrall regarded Donald for a moment with an expression of curiosity on his face. He turned toward Fredda.

  “Dr. Leving, I wonder if you might indulge my curiosity for a moment. This robot here. Am I correct in believing that you designed and built it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I see. You are a well-known figure, of course, and so too are many of your creations.”

  Kresh chuckled darkly. “That’s putting it mildly.” Lentrall looked toward Kresh, and smiled thinly. “I suppose you have a point, sir. But what confuses me is the name. ‘Donald.’”

  “It’s a fancy of mine to use character names from an ancient storyteller for all my custom-made robots,” said Fredda. “A man who lived on old Earth, in the pre-robotic era. A man by the name of –”

  “Shakespeare,” said Lentrall. “I know that. William Shakespeare. And just incidentally, I think it might be more accurate to call him a poet and a playwright, rather than a storyteller. I have studied him myself. That’s what made me wonder. The names of your other robots: Caliban, Prospero, Ariel. All Shakespeare. I even saw some sort of feature story about your home, and noticed your current personal robot is named Oberon. Shakespeare again. That is why I wonder. Why the name ‘Donald’?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sir, if I might be of assistance,” Donald said, addressing Lentrall. “I am named for a minor character in the play Macbeth.”

  “But there is no character by that name in the play,” Lentrall replied. “I know the play well. In fact, I am morally certain there is no character by the name ‘Donald’ anywhere in Shakespeare.” Lentrall thought for a moment. “There is a Donalbain in Macbeth,” he suggested. “‘Donald’ must be a corruption of ‘Donalbain.’”

  “Sir, forgive me for correcting you, but I have just consulted my on-board dataset, and I have confirmed the character is named ‘Donald.’”

  “Of course he is, in your copy,” Lentrall said. “If Dr. Leving’s copy was corrupted, and your on-board reference is based on it, of course it has the name wrong as well. A lot of errors creep into the ancient texts over time.”

  “Might it be possible, sir, that your copy of the play is in error?” Donald suggested.

  “Anything might be possible, but I very much doubt my copy is in error. I am something of a collector of such things, and I possess four different sets of Shakespeare, three as datasets and one a hard copy. There’s not a ‘Donald’ in any of them.”

  “I see,” said Donald, clearly taken aback by Lentrall’s news. “Clearly I must review my on-board dataset.”

  “Interesting,” said Lentrall as Donald retreated to his wall niche. “I suppose the moral is that we never know quite as much as we think we know. Wouldn’t you agree, Dr. Leving?”

  “Hmmm? What? Oh, yes.” Fredda felt completely thrown off her stride. How could she have made a mistake like that? What other mistakes had she made over the years without even knowing it? It was remarkable how such a trivial error could make her feel so embarrassed.

  And it was also remarkable that Lentrall could be rude and arrogant enough to call her on it the moment they met. Yet the fellow seemed to have no idea that had been rude. Davlo Lentrall was a most peculiar young man – and not one with the sort of skills and personality required to get far in politics. Lucky for him he had chosen another field.

  But none of this was getting the discussion moving. “Perhaps it is time to turn to the matter at hand,” she said.

  “Absolutely,” said Lentrall. “How much do you know so far?”

  Fredda hesitated, and glanced toward her husband. But his impassive expression gave her no clue. “Just to be clear, Dr. Lentrall, my husband has told me nothing at all. He wanted me to hear it all from you. So please, start at the beginning.”

  “Right,” Lentrall said, in a tone close enough to brusque that it made no difference. “The basic point is that I believe I have found a way to enhance the terraforming process and permanently stabilize the climate.”

  “But only by putting the lives of perhaps millions of people at risk,” said Lentrall’s robot from its niche.

  “Be quiet, Kaelor,” Lentrall said impatiently.

  “First Law compelled me to say at least that much,” the robot replied, in an aggrieved tone of voice. “Your plan of action would put many human beings in danger.”

  “I would hardly call it danger,” Lentrall said testily. “Rather, very slight risk. But if my plan succeeds, it will mean greater safety and comfort for generations of humans yet to come.”

  “That argument contains far too many hypotheticals to be of any interest to me,” Kaelor replied.

  “You have made your point now,” Lentrall said. “I order you to be quiet.” He shook his head and looked to Fredda. “I know you are famous for building superb robots,” he said. “But there are times when I wonder if the Settlers don’t have a point.”

  “The same thought has crossed my mind more than once,” said Fredda. “But please go on. How do you propose to stabilize the climate?”

  “By flooding the north pole,” Lentrall said. “I call it the Polar Sea Project.”

  “What, precisely, would that accomplish?” Fredda asked. Lentrall stared hard at her for a moment, as if she had just asked what use robotic labor might be. “Let me go back a bit,” he said at last. “In fact, let me go all the way back. As you might know, when the first Spacers arrived at this planet, what they found was a desert world that consisted of two large and distinct geologic regions. The southernmost two-thirds of the planet were lowlands, while the northernmost third was covered by a huge plateau, much higher in elevation than the southern hemisphere. For that precise reason, Inferno was regarded as a marginal candidate for terraforming.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when water was introduced onto the planet, it would obviously all pool in the south – as indeed it has. Today we call the northern uplands the continent of Terra Grande, and the southern lowlands have been flooded to form the Southern Ocean. This gives the planet one water-covered pole and one landlocked one.”

  “And what difference does that make?”

  “A great deal of difference. Water absorbs heat energy far more efficiently than the atmosphere can. Water can circulate, carrying that heat along with it. Temperatures in the southern hemisphere are much more moderate and stable than they are in the north, because warm water can flow over the south pole and the polar regions, warming them up. Cold polar water can move toward the temperate zones and cool them off. I am oversimplifying things tremendously, of course, but that is the basic idea.”

  “And that can’ t happen in the north, because there is no water,” Fredda said, glancing toward her husband. But his face was completely expressionless. He was watching this game, not playing it.

  Lentrall nodded eagerly. “Precisely. Terra Grande is a huge, monolithic continent. It completely covers the northern third of the planet’s surface. Because no water can flow over the North Pole region, there is little chance for temperatures to moderate themselves in the northern hemisphere. The tropical regions of the northern hemisphere are too hot, while the polar regions are too cold. If you look at a map, you will see that the southern edge of Terra Grande – where most of the people live – more or less borders the northern edge of the north tropical zone. Right here, in Hades, we should be right in the center of the temperate regions. But the temperate regions are shrinking, and we are very near the northern border of the habitable zone, at least by some standards. Actually, there are a few rather stringent Settler measures by which the city of Hades is, technically, uninhabitable. Because of insufficient rainfall, I believe. Be that as it may, the habitable zone of this planet is already little more than a narrow strip, five or si
x hundred kilometers wide, along the southern coast of Terra Grande. And that strip is still shrinking, despite our best efforts, and despite local successes.”

  “I thought the terraforming project was gaining ground,” Fredda said, looking toward her husband.

  “It is,” said Alvar. “In places. Mostly in the places where people live. We are losing ground elsewhere – but we are doing much better around Hades and in the Great Bay region generally. Once we have this part of the world under control, we hope to expand outward.”

  “If you get the chance,” Lentrall said. “Current projections show it could go either way. You’re relying on a high-point balance. It’s unstable.”

  “What’s a high-point balance?” Fredda asked.

  Lentrall smiled as he reached into the breast pocket of his tunic and pulled out a large coin – a Settler coin, Fredda could not help but notice. He had it so ready to hand that Fredda assumed he had put it there deliberately, just to be ready to make his point.,

  “This is a high-point balance,” he said. He held his left hand with the index finger pointed straight up, and carefully placed the coin on the tip of his index finger. “In theory, I could hold this coin here indefinitely,” he said. “All I have to do is keep my finger completely steady, keep my arm from moving, keep from being jostled – while, at the same time compensating for any minute gusts of air, any very slight tremor in the building. And of course, I have to be sure I don’t overcompensate while trying to correct for some very minor –”

  But at that moment, the coin suddenly fell from his finger and landed ringingly on the stone floor of the office. Somehow the sound of it striking the floor was much louder than Fredda had expected.

  “I’ve just given you a pretty fair metaphor for the present state of Inferno’s planetary climate. It is stable for the moment, but if there is the slightest perturbation, there will be trouble. There is no negative feedback in the system, nothing working against a perturbation to push the system back toward stability. Ever since the first climate engineer started to work here, the balance point for Inferno’s climate has been a high point tottering between two extremes, with the slightest shift capable of sending the whole thing crashing down into overheating or supercooling. We have to get everything exactly right every time, or else...” He nodded toward the coin on the floor.